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Students involved in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) or related disciplines won’t want to miss the Transportation Technology Tournament—a contest being hosted this year by the USDOT’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office Professional Capacity Building Program (PCB) and the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE).

The contest tasks student teams to pose creative solutions to real-world transportation problems while working directly with a state or local department of transportation. Winners will be flown to the 2018 Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Annual Meeting in Minneapolis to give a live presentation of their project in front of a panel of judges comprising leaders from the ITS and transportation systems management operations (TSMO) communities.

Before completing an application, interested students should form a multidisciplinary team of 4-6, consisting of at least one non-civil engineer, with at least two members under the age of 26. Teams must also have the support of an academic sponsor/advisor, as well as an advisor from a state or local DOT, or a representative from a private engineering consultancy.

In their application, teams will submit, along with other materials, a formal statement of the transportation challenge or problem their project will address. This could be a problem previously identified by their own DOT or by another public agency. If unable to work with a local agency, select teams will be eligible to address one of two sample problems identified on the project website.

Qualifying teams will go on to attend online training programs and, under the guidance of their advisors, work to develop one or more proposed solutions to the problem being addressed over a three-month timeline. Teams will create a 10-page packet describing their problem, proposed solutions, anticipated impacts (e.g., enhanced safety), costs, etc.

Submissions will be reviewed at the end of May by a judging panel, which will select winners to present in Minneapolis this August.